While the present invention is useful in monitoring any type of program, such as regular programs, commercials, public service announcements, and the like, it is particularly well suited for the monitoring of commercials. Therefore, the present invention is described herein in the context of commercial monitoring. However, it should be kept in mind that the present invention can be used to monitor any type of program.
Commercials, which are aired by television and/or radio broadcast stations, are currently monitored by existing commercial monitoring systems in order to assemble competitive program information relating to those commercials. Such competitive program information typically includes at least the identities of each aired commercial, the times at which each commercial was aired, the duration of each commercial as aired, and the channel over which each commercial was aired.
Competitive program information may be useful to advertisers who wish to determine that their commercials were actually aired at the times, and for the durations, purchased by the advertisers. This information may also be important to network broadcasters to determine that their local affiliates have aired the national or regional commercials of the network broadcasters, and that such commercials were not replaced with local commercials by the local affiliates. Furthermore, performers who perform in commercials may find competitive program information important in order to identify the level of compensation to which they are entitled.
Competitive program information is often combined with cost and brand information. From this combination of information, competitive advertising reports may be assembled from which advertisers, advertising agencies, and the like, may determine such useful competitive information as the advertising revenues expended by advertiser and/or by brand, the advertising strategies implemented by advertisers for their brands, and the like.
One methodology employed by current commercial monitoring systems in order to assemble competitive program information involves the use of identification codes which are embedded in the commercials to be monitored. Broadcasts are then monitored for such embedded identification codes and, if any of the embedded identification codes are detected, information about the commercials in which the identification codes are embedded are stored for later transmission to a central facility. Another methodology employed by current commercial monitoring systems in order to assemble competitive program information involves the use of a reference pattern which is stored in a reference file for each commercial to be monitored. Broad-cast patterns are then extracted from broadcasts, and the extracted broadcast patterns are compared to the stored reference patterns. A match between an extracted broadcast pattern and a stored reference pattern indicates that one of the commercials to be monitored was aired. Information about that commercial is then stored for later transmission to a central facility.
Commercial monitoring systems relying on embedded identification codes are limited by the fact that not all commercials carry a commercial identification code embedded therein. Commercial monitoring systems relying on pattern recognition are limited by the number of reference patterns which may be effectively and economically stored and processed by the pattern matching computer. That is, the accuracy of commercial recognition is a function of the accuracy of the match between the extracted broadcast patterns and the stored reference patterns; the accuracy of the match between the extracted broadcast patterns and the stored reference patterns is a function of the uniqueness of these patterns; and, the uniqueness of these patterns is typically a function of the size of these patterns.
Moreover, in both types of commercial monitoring systems, the commercial monitoring equipment, which is chosen to receive the broadcast signals from all monitored broadcast stations, is usually located at a single monitoring site. The selection of this single monitoring site is often critical because the broadcast signals from all monitored broadcast stations must have sufficient signal strength at the single monitoring site that either the embedded identification codes can be accurately detected or the extracted broadcast patterns can be accurately extracted. Since it is often difficult to find a single monitoring site where the broadcast signals from all of the monitored broadcast stations are received with sufficient signal strength to permit accurate identification of the commercials aired by all of the monitored broadcast stations in the monitored area, more than one monitoring site is often required.
Furthermore, since the cost of airing commercials is not broadcast by broadcasters, commercial monitoring equipment cannot automatically receive and process this cost information. Therefore, if competitive program information is to be correlated with cost and brand information in order to assemble competitive advertising reports, cost information must be manually acquired and entered so that such competitive advertising reports may be generated.
Because of the time required to acquire cost information, and because the cost of airing commercials may fluctuate between the time that the cost information is acquired, the time that the cost information is entered, and the time that the competitive advertising reports are generated, cost information is often stale by the time that competitive advertising reports are delivered to the end users. Accordingly, providing accurate competitive advertising reports is both difficult and time consuming.
The present invention solves one or more of the above described problems.